I was on a retreat for last week at Staveley Camp with Southern Insight Meditation. Southern Insight has been around for 20 years or so, and have various external and internal lay teachers, several of which studied with Christopher Titmuss (Gaia House, UK).

On the last day, when we could talk again, I was approached by a gentleman who asked "Are you mikenz66? I'm Goofaholix." Great to meet another on-line associate in real-life space.

Goofaholix showing that he's the most dedicated participant, with the simplest cushion setup...

This is one of a number of Christian camps in NZ that rent themselves out to various groups (scouts, amateur astronomers, Zen and insight meditation groups...).
It's all run on a voluntary basis, with lists and menus and so on developed over the past 20 years, so it goes quite smoothly. Like the ski weeks I used to go to on club skifields when I was young. This keeps that cost down, but of course we all have to participate in cooking/cleaning/etc. I like toilet cleaning personally, since it's quite a reasonably solitary activity, and my partner and I developed a very efficient routine that beat the women's team hands down (not that cleaning is a competition...).

There was, of course, much more talking and other activities than I'm used to with essentially solitary retreats at monasteries. However, that was useful in breaking my routine, and giving me new perspectives.

A lot of the participants (and the teachers) work in counselling-related professions, and there is a strong environmental-awareness undercurrent. That feeling of people reaching out to make a difference, in accordance with the Dhamma, was very moving. For example, one of the participants was heavily involved in this initiative that reduced re-offending of violent offenders dramatically, and won various awards: http://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/ ... -top-prize and he credited his Dhamma training with giving him the tools to work effectively with offenders, without being overly judgemental.

I am more and more seeing right speech, right action and right livelihood as key aspects of the Path. Over the past 10 years I've gained a lot of theoretical knowledge, and had plenty of technique development. This retreat made it clearer that actually applying Dhamma out in the world is the challenging part.

mikenz66 wrote:
I am more and more seeing right speech, right action and right livelihood as key aspects of the Path. Over the past 10 years I've gained a lot of theoretical knowledge, and had plenty of technique development. This retreat made it clearer that actually applying Dhamma out in the world is the challenging part.